But there are still some outstanding questions about exactly what
private client information reporters were able to access, as well
as whether reporters were encouraged to snoop on clients
by senior editors at Bloomberg News or whether they did this on
their own without senior management knowing.

We have asked Bloomberg to address these questions, but the
company has declined to respond on the record.

If you're not familiar with Bloomberg Terminals, they are
machines targeted toward financial professionals that allow them
to access news, data, stock quotes and message one another. They
cost about $20,000 per year.

The New York Post revealed last week that Bloomberg
reporters have used private client data from terminal users at
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan for
stories. After Goldman complained
about an unnamed reporter pointing out that a partner at the bank
had not logged in and inquired if he had left the firm, Bloomberg
cut off access to this data for its reporters.

Bloomberg has said that its reporters could only see general
functions that its clients were using, not the specific
securities the clients looked at or the specific communications
the clients sent and received (with the exception of transcripts
of calls to Bloomberg's help desk). Bloomberg also
said in several statements that reporters could not see
which news stories clients were reading.

Gawker, however, has reported that that reporters could look
at an individual story and find out who read it and who emailed
it. The function on the Bloomberg Terminal to do this, the
Gawker source said, is 2<GO>. An anonymous source who
claimed to be a former Bloomberg editor told us the same thing.

In other
words, this source asserted, reporters could not look at a
specific client and see which stories he or she was reading, but
they could look at a story and see who had read it.

We checked with several sources at Bloomberg about this. All
three denied the Gawker report, saying that the 2<GO>
function merely shows how many people had read a particular
story, not who had read it.

Another question that Bloomberg has yet to answer is whether
Bloomberg News reporters were encouraged to use private data to
spy on clients, or whether they did this on their own.

Gawker has reported that the spying scandal
originated at the top. According to Gawker, the editor in
chief of Bloomberg News, Matthew
Winkler, encouraged reporters to check to see if specific
bankers were using the "job listings" function on the terminal as
a way of detecting whether they might soon being leaving their
firms.

Bloomberg provided an on-the-record comment to Gawker, but it did
not challenge this assertion.

Bloomberg has
not publicly laid the blame for the spying scandal at anyone's
feet. But both Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg's CEO, and Matt Winkler,
Bloomberg's editor in chief, have publicly apologized.